Upside Down
by litromantic
Summary: Taking things a little farther in 6.18. Maybe she can't stop. Doesn't she have a right to be confused by now? She didn't think the consequences would be so big. It only takes one time. Literati, angsty.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Upside Down

**Summary:** Taking things a little farther in 6.18. Maybe she can't stop. Doesn't she have a right to be confused by now? She didn't think the consequences would be so big. It only takes one time.

**Notes:** I, of course as a literati fan, shared a love/hate relationship with "The Real Paul Anka". I mean, it was great to see Jess so happy and doing so well, and I know that how they ended the episode was the only way they could take it as far as where Rory is in her life right now (to explain further: she sucks). But here's my take on, if Milo wasn't being so ridiculous and let himself be written back into the show, what would really happen. I'm going to do this without bashing Logan or making Jess look perfect, so . . . I guess I hope you like it.

------

_Life is turned down upside down_

_But then maybe _

_It's just been put back the right way round_

_All your dreams realized_

_There's a fire in your eyes_

_And despite of its size _

_You soon realize that it's alright_

_Tonight, feels right_

_Now theres a cross_

_That nobody should really have to bear_

_But then maybe_

_That's just when lifes treating you fair_

_There are lessons you learn_

_When you've waited your turn_

_And things didn't turn out_

_Quite the way that you dreamt about_

_But it still feels right_

Life Turned Upside Down by Badly Drawn Boy

He is so close to her, she can feel his knees against hers, through the fabric of their clothes, as if there is heat coming from his skin. She wonders, as her literary mind always does, why there are so many people she meets every day, sees and talks to, touches more than this, and there is no spark. Sometimes even with her boyfriend. But with Jess, she does not see him for a month, a year, two, or more, and just after a glance the spark turns into an intoxicating fire, a fire she cannot help but stare into, sometimes walk into. Even when he is being an ass, if he did not leave like he did in her dorm freshman year, she was sure she would have kissed him anyways. And now . . . now he was not "Jess, the public high school dropout who always leaves" but "Jess, the author, Jess, the man who is happy". She can see it in his eyes right now as he looks at her hopefully, she can see a sparkle behind the color, and she can see the life he made. She wants to throw him a party, buy him the world, just because he found this happiness, all by himself, or maybe she helped a little. "I couldn't have done it without you," he told her. But he still wants more. Or maybe he needs it.

"I'm glad you came," he says finally, as if needing an excuse for being so close to her. Rory thinks that maybe she should leave now, go back to Logan, drive back to her new life. But can she really call that uncomfortable apartment, filled with her and Logan's problems, a home right now? Maybe she should work it out with Logan. Maybe this is wrong.

"Me too," she says, and looks down at his lips, hoping he sees her shift in vision. Maybe this is what she needs. He moves in now, and she feels his lips before they touch hers, softly, gently, as if he is afraid to scare her away. A voice in the back of her head tells her she should leave, push him away, apologize and cry, and then go back to her mom. That's what Rory would do, that's what Mary would do. But, whatever this is: revenge, lust, unfinished business, she wants it. She wants it so bad it feels as if she is about to explode, or maybe that's him, his tongue now exploring familiar territory. He moves his hand to her shoulder, pulling her closer, and her whole body becomes heated, her head buzzing. It is Jess, she is sure of it. She kisses him back, deep, trying to get as much of him as she can, as much of the feeling of freedom and ecstasy. He pulls back, not to reject her, but to look at her. Her eyes are still closed at first, so involved she does not understand what has happened. But then she opens them and sees him smiling at her, and she pouts.

"No fair," she says.

"I missed you, Rory," he says softly, just as he always says the things he really means. Softly, so no one can hear, so no one can remember, so he can just say it because he needs to. She smiles instinctively, surprised to hear him be so honest. She tries to put out words, but the only thing she can think of is 'happy', which would not be as good as 'I miss you too' or even, 'I love you'. He does not seem to notice, and moves to her neck, kissing it softly, warmly, kissing the spot he remembers. Rory moans just a little: Logan has never found that spot; that has always been Jess' spot.

"I always miss you," he says, muffled in-between kisses. I miss you: the words trigger in her head the thought of Logan-her boyfriend. For a second, she feels bad and guilty, regretful even. But then she remembers all the feelings of frustration, confusion and anger that come with the words "her boyfriend" and she moves her body closer to Jess' again, holding tightly onto his back. When he looks up, she kisses him with a passion her resentment towards Logan had chased away. After a minute, she pulls back slowly, pressing her forehead against Jess', smiling, a little out of breath.

"I guess you're glad to see me," Jess says at last, laughing a little, laughing at them, at where they are and where they have been, where they have come from. Laughing because he is happy. Rory knows it: he is happy. He kisses her again, quickly, on the lips.

"I live upstairs . . . my roommates are out," he says almost shyly, and Rory laughs.

"Hey, what makes you think I'm that happy to see you?"

"What? You mean-oh no Rory Gilmore, I was just thinking . . . you know, I have books up there. I think you would like to see them," his smile is sly.

"I've seen your books before," she decides to make him work for it, even though they both know he is going to get it. She brings her hand to his hair, playing with it, strong and soft.

"I've gotten new books, different books," he kisses her cheek, her jaw line, her nose. He has always been very persuasive. He kisses behind her ear, and a shiver runs down her spine. He moves his face away again, waiting for her response. She stands up, almost as if she is about to walk out the door, finally do the right thing. But she doesn't. He watches her, as she smiles like a teenager again, grabbing his hand, walking backwards. He walks towards her, not taking his eyes off her, watching her as if he is in awe. When she turns to walk up the stairs, he stops her and kisses her, one of those kisses that makes her toes go numb. When he steps back and starts to walk up the stairs again, she remembers one more time about reality, about ethics, glances at the door for just a second, and then decides. She kisses him all the way up the stairs. She kisses him all the way.

-----

He has fallen asleep, his head on her shoulder, his breath hot on her skin. She had pretended to fall asleep as to not worry him, but now that he no longer watches her, her eyes are open almost unnaturally wide, staring at the ceiling. Three words keep echoing in her mind, not very intelligent for a journalism major, but it is all she can think of.

"Oh my God," she says them to the ceiling. After the passion, after the sex, after the moans, after the ecstasy, she finally returns to earth. When he said those words: "I love you, Rory." Just like Logan said not that long ago.

She still loves him. Logan. The asshole, the man who cheated on her, the man who might move to another country after semester ends. But he is still hers. And no matter how much she wishes that she could hate him, it is not over yet. He is still her Logan. Or he was, before she did this. What will he do if he finds out? Rory almost cries. She cheated on him tonight. She yelled at him, reprimanded him, made him beg for her: and then cheated on him. She looks back at Jess again, his lips curved into a hint of a smile. Is it from a dream, she wonders, or from her?

She still loves him. Jess. The jerk, the man who left her heartbroken, the man who told her he loved her and then left, the man who only sees her when he wants something from her. But he is still hers. She knew it even when he was disappointed in her, even when he thought she was a failure. He will always be hers. What will he do if he finds out she did not 'fix' everything? A pain hits her heart as she tries to picture his face if he knew he was the other man, if he knew that Logan is waiting for her at their apartment. She always pegged him as the bad guy; now she is using him. Jess moves in his sleep, away from her, almost as if he heard her confession inside her mind.

She looks at his back, muscular and tan, the same back that has turned on her so many times. She touches it tentatively with one hand, and he flinches. She retracts her hand quickly, but he snores silently and she knows he is still asleep. She moves closer to his body, her naked front against his naked back, an almost perfect fit. Lying there for a moment, she knows that a part of her wants to stay here. A part of her will always want to stay here. But should and want are different words. She kisses the back of his neck softly, and then scoots slowly out of the bed, careful not to tug on the sheets and disturb him. She puts her clothes on in the dark, his roommates still are not home. Walking towards the stairs again, she passes a notepad with a pen resting askew beside it. She reaches for it, and then pulls back again. A cruel part of her says he deserves it. She pads down the stairs and out the door, a shopping list on a post-it falling from her coat pocket and the smile on Jess' face the only evidence she has been here.

----

This is a multi-chapter, I promise. Actually, I already have part of the next chapter written, so it should be up really soon. I know that I always say I'm going to update and I don't, but there is no way I could leave this story like this. There is a lot more to come. I wish I could write it all out in one chapter, but the flow would be really bad and your eyeballs would fall out, which would also be bad, of course.


	2. Chapter 2

**Title:** Upside Down

**Summary:** Taking things a little farther in 6.18. Maybe she can't stop. Doesn't she have a right to be confused by now? She didn't think the consequences would be so big. It only takes one time.

**Notes**: Thanks so much for all of your reviews! It gets a little more dramatic from here on out. Well, a lot more dramatic. Hopefully it doesn't seem completely unrealistic. Because to me this is what should happen and what could happen if this show didn't suck right now. At least I'm not going to give Jess a long lost kid . . . cough . . . Anyway, I hope you like this chapter as much as (or more than) the last one.

----

_Lately,_

_I'm not quite myself._

_Maybe, _

_I do need some help._

_just my confusion,_

_trust my delusions._

_Don't you_

_Regret you met me._

_go through_

_These steps to get me_

_Back to where we start_

_Before I fall apart._

_If I could black out,_

_It'd become so clear,_

_Standing face-to-face with everything I fear._

_watch so closely, _

_but still I don't see._

_As bad as it seems, _

_a piece of mind I'd steel,_

_In ordinary life, _

_The consequence is real._

_I'm past the point of reality._

Sum 41-Open Your Eyes

The house looks big and strange. She hates how it looks that way now, a different color and shape. She hates how it does not feel like the house she grew up in anymore. It feels even stranger to her now as she looks at the spot in which Jess used to stand, trying to call her out of her bedroom in to the unknown dark of the night. She feels even stranger than she usually does, as if the last time she walked out of the door was years ago, and she embarked on an odyssey where her whole world turned upside down. She thinks it's strange that one night, one mistake, could make her feel this different. Walking towards the porch, she brushes off the gnawing feeling in her gut simply as guilt. When she gets to the door, she has to stop herself from knocking. She laughs out loud a little, offset and a little afraid at how removed she feels.

"Mom?" she calls out after entering the house (without knocking), knowing Lorelai is upstairs by a thud of either something falling on the floor or Lorelai running into a cabinet.

"Ror?" her voice carries unsure down the stairs.

"Yeah, it's me. I . . . uh . . . forgot a shirt," she lies lamely. She watches as Lorelai bounds into the hallway, dressed in a short shirt and gray sweatpants. Rory forgot that Luke was out of town.

"Aw, you missed your mommy again? Look, keep this up kid, I might have to pull a restraining order on you," she grins in obvious enjoyment. Rory smiles weakly and, despite her efforts, is unable to come up with a response. Lorelai notices immediately, and frowns.

"What's wrong hon? You've only been gone, like, what? A day?" her forehead furrows, concerned. Rory opens her mouth to come up with another excuse, maybe even a joke, but she feels a tear come down her face instead, burning a clean line as it makes its way down her cheek.

"Oh sweetie!" Lorelai practically jumps down the rest of the stairs, enveloping her daughter in the tightest hug she can manage, trying to form a protective shield around her like a plastic bubble.

"God, Mom, I messed up. I told him . . . I yelled at him . . . and then I went to Philadelphia! Even though I knew what it would be like!" she spits out in between sobs, her back heaving up and down, up and down. Lorelai rubs her back in a motherly way, trying again to pull her closer.

"Philadelphia? What's in Phil-" she tries desperately to understand what distresses her only child. Her eyes widen as she answers her own question.

"Oh, honey." Rory sobs again, louder, her shoulders shaking.

"Did you guys fight or something?" she guesses hopelessly, referring to Jess. Rory wishes with her entire body that she could say yes, that for the umpteenth time she had turned him down. She wishes she could tell her mother she was that same girl, She shakes her head into her mother's shoulder.

"You . . . found out he's actually working at an escort service instead of a publishing company?" Rory laughs weakly at her mother's attempts, her laughter fading into more sobs and more tears.

"I slept with him," she says finally and the back rubbing stops abrubtly. Lorelai had always stuck to the idea that Jess was the bad guy, but she always thought she knew that Rory's goodness outweighed that.

"You . . . he . . . he didn't force you, did he?" Lorelai says, desperate to find an explanation that excuses her daughter of any blame. She pulls back, holding Rory's face tightly, as if trying to squeeze an alibi out of her mouth. She shakes her head again; the sobbing stops but another tear slips down her porcelain skin. Lorelai's face falls as she looks at her broken twenty year old daughter. She wishes she could pick Rory up in her arms, stop her pain with a soft nursery rhyme.

"Oh, kid."

---------

A door opens almost tentatively; Rory looks up, her ears almost perking like a dog. She hears a suitcase hit the floor, and then silence. Her heart beats quickly in hope.

"Ace?" Logan calls finally, sounding unsure as to whether he wants to know if she's home or not. She gets up off the bed and pads across the hardwood floor in her cotton socks, trying to stop herself from running. She wants to see that golden hair again, those lively eyes. She has missed they way they dance when he smiles. His complacent attitude vigorous expressions will make things better again, make the strange feeling in her heart go away, she is sure of it. She slides into the front hallway and halts to a stop in front of Logan. She looks up at him: the golden boy. He looks at her: afraid and unsure, hopeful and fragile. They stand there like that for several moments, waiting for someone to make the first move, or waiting for the world to fall, whichever comes first.

"I'm glad-"

"I missed-"

They start at the same time, then laugh a little, embarrassed, yet relieved.

"I'm glad you didn't move out," Logan says quietly, smiling his big grin.

"Are you kidding? It's a great apartment," she smiles back, holding her left arm with her right, still uncomfortable. He steps forward slowly, taking her hands into his when he reaches her, kissing her on her forehead lightly and sweetly. Rory closes her eyes, feeling a warmth spread down her face.

"I'm glad you're home," Rory says honestly as she opens her eyes again, glistening with sincerity. She has hated living alone in a large apartment, in a building where none of the neighbors are her friends, waiting for the man she has cheated on to come home. She had almost expected him to call and tell her he has found out, that Jess has called him and told him: she has nightmares about it. It has been a month since the night, since she came back from Lorelai's to find a letter from Logan. "Wait here if you want," it had said, "but if you already know what you want, you can leave your key on the counter, or drop it off later if you want". At the end "I love you" had been erased unsuccessfully, the graphite still on the paper, a ghost of what it had once been.

She has to tell him. She looks at his boyish face and his crinkled smile, and almost backs out. She hopes he'll understand. Tightening her grip on his hands in an attempt to keep him with her, she looks askance from his face.

"Logan . . . while you were gone . . . I . . . made a mistake," she waits for a moment, then looks up again, expecting to see his face angry, hurt or in the least suspicious. Instead, she discovers the same smile still playing on his face. Did she only imagine saying that outloud?

"I . . . did you hear me?" she asks in disbelief. His smile widens.

"I heard you. But, look. Here's what I figure. I made some mistakes, too. And even if you did make a mistake, you're still here. And we can start over. We can move on, Ace. All the way to the top."

He kisses her on the lips, softly and uncharacteristically chaste.

"I'm gonna go lug my stuff into the room, and then we'll have . . . a talk, a proper welcome home party, a staring contest or whatever," he looks at her eyes, his expression happy, "okay?" She nods and smiles. He kisses her forehead again, then heads back to the hallway. She keeps making people happy. She wishes she could say the same for herself. The unhappiness and insecurity is supposed to go away now. She is supposed to feel light and liberated. What is the boulder-like load that has settled so comfortably on her chest?

"I'll tell you some great stories, too," Logan calls from the hallway, "including my personal favorite about Finn and a chipmunk." Rory forces a laugh.

"I can't wait," she says, biting her bottom lip.

------

Logan only got home two days ago, a voice says ominously in her head.

"That doesn't matter," she tells it, "I don't know anything yet. I'm sure it's nothing." She looks behind her, the bathroom sink visible through the open door. "It better be nothing," she adds, muttering. What if it isn't? The thought comes up, uninvited but inevitable, in her mind. Always expect the worst. Logan would hate her. He may have be forgiving, but he is not superman. He would probably throw her out onto the streets, yelling angry repercussions at her as she flees the building. She couldn't throw It out, she knew that already: she is sick of doing the wrong thing.

What would he say? She thinks suddenly of him, the other factor. He hates her now, she's sure of it. He has probably burned his sheets, spit on whatever pictures he has left of them, and torn up her invitation he sent her optimistically that she left settled on a coffee table downstairs. How could she tell him something like this? How could she expect anything from her now?

A timer dings loudly and obnoxiously, and Rory gasps in her breath. Her legs freeze, her arms stiff and unmoving. Her eyes open wide and her mind blanks out for a minute or so, until the world fades into her own mind, flashes of memories. A lot were of her mother, selected periods of time. The first time she thought she was her mother's mistake and the resulting reassuring words of love and devotion Lorelai said with such emotion authenticity. Some of the days when she would visit her friends from school or see someone in public and think that it was her fault that Christopher was never around. She remembered her first real kiss, with Dean in an aisle at Dose's. A day when she and Lane were sitting on the floor next to Rory's bed and Rory told her she was sure she and Dean were going to get married. The first time Rory met Jess, and all their firsts from then on. After being pushed to the back of her mind for so long, the memory of the night where Rory felt she would have liked to last forever, the night Jess accidentally and symbolically crashed the car Dean made for Rory, came back to her. The night when she decided she always wanted to be with Jess. Then the next couple months, where her dreams of a Jess-filled life crashed to the ground to the days when it all came back, where they kissed, talked, read, listened and sat, warm by the heat of each other, apart from the world. She remembered the infamous day when he left her and destroyed her fantasy, when he left and took her with him. It was because of his father, was it not? Chasing his father to California. She has chased her father away from her.

When she finally comes back to earth, when the reel of her life finally stops turning, she almost thinks it has all been a horrible dream, from the brides maids to the unexpected sex.

She turns slowly, carefully, until she is facing the bathroom again. The door is still open at the same angle, the light still shining through on the same patch of floor, but maybe that is a coincidence. She walks slowly, ever so slowly, to the room of doom. She closes her eyes as she reaches the door, afraid to see anything too soon. When her anxiety takes the best of her, she decides she can't stay there in the doorway forever, she opens her eyes slowly, one at a time. Her heart sinks: it is still there. It's true: she lives in reality. Before she reaches it, before she picks it up and turns it around, she knows what it's going to say.

"Oh God," she lets out in one breath. Her legs go weak, threatening a fall. Yes, it said. Go ahead and do whatever, I am just going to turn your life upside down, it said. Pregnant, it said.

-----

Chapter 2 is complete. Yaaaaaay. So there it is: the big twist. And still so much more to come. I really tried not to rush this chapter, so I hope it comes out smooooothly. Obviously, there are more chapters to come. I love writing this story, its fun.


End file.
